until he recovers it, or not survive so dire a calamity. This is a fixed dogma with them. A man who loses his prāna linga stands up to his neck in water, and repeats mantrams (sacred formulae) for days together; and, on the last day, the lost lingam comes back to him miracu-lously, if he has been really orthodox in his life. If he does not succeed in recovering it, he must starve and die. The theory is that the lingam is the life of the man who wears it, and, when it is lost beyond recovery, he loses his own life. Incredible stories of miraculous recoveries of the lingam are told. In one case, it is said to have returned to its owner, making a loud noise in water; and in another it was found in a box under lock and key.In this connection, the following story is narrated by Colonel Wilks.*[1] "Poornia, the present minister of Mysore, relates an incident of a Lingāyat friend of his,who had unhappily lost his portable God, and came to take a last farewell. The Indians, like more enlightened nations, readily laugh at the absurdities of every sect but their own, and Poornia gave him better counsel. It is a part of the ceremonial preceding the sacrifice of the individual that the principal persons of the sect should assemble on the bank of some holy stream, and, placing in a basket the lingam images of the whole assembly, purify them in the sacred waters. The destined victim in conformity to the advice of his friend, suddenly seized the basket, and overturned its contents into the rapid Caveri. Now, my friends, said he, we are on equal terms; let us prepare to die together. The discussion terminated according to expectation. The whole party took an oath of inviolable secrecy, and each privately provided himself with a new image of the lingam."
- ↑ * Historical Sketches of the South of India.
